‘He does,’ she said with an emphatic nod that defied anyone to argue.
‘I heard about a giant doxy in breeches who lived here behind Mantaigne’s back, but I never thought you’d stay and warm his bed for him now he’s found courage to come back after all these years of cowering away in town.’
‘You take that back, she’s my sister and she’s not a doxy,’ Henry Trethayne ordered, in a fine brotherly fury Tom hadn’t thought the scholarly boy had in him.
‘Ladies don’t wear breeches or carry pistols,’ the nephew pointed out with a sneer, and Tom wondered if he had found some courage over the past two decades, until he reminded himself the fool probably didn’t believe she would actually shoot him, his mistake.
‘Yet still I have the pistol and you have a great deal of explaining to do,’ she said as coolly as most ladies of Tom’s acquaintance might if they were wielding a teapot and asking if an unwanted visitor would like more tea rather than brandishing a pistol he hadn’t even known she possessed.
‘I suggest you start now before one of us decides to shoot you for the hell of it,’ he said coolly, despite this mad impulse to grin like a fool because he’d suddenly realised exactly how complex and how simple his life was going to be from now on.
Arrogant of him to believe he would win her when Polly was about as predictable as the north wind, but something told him the chance was right here, ready to be seized and gloated over, and he really didn’t intend to waste it.
‘I, for one, am getting very bored,’ Peters said laconically and Tom had never liked the fellow better.
‘And I just wish someone would let me have a go,’ Hal said with an aggrieved look at his sister, who narrowed her incredible eyes and straightened her arm as if getting ready to pick which bit of villain to shoot first.
‘All right,’ the smaller of the two men said with a look of terror on his face. ‘I’ll tell you everything if you all promise not to shoot.’
‘I’m not set on it, at least not in your case,’ Tom said reasonably enough to his way of thinking.
‘I really don’t like the idea of them invading your house whenever they feel like it,’ Polly said calmly, and Peters just grinned and cocked his pistol as if he didn’t have to dislike a man to take a potshot at him.
‘Our house,’ Tom corrected as patiently as he could manage.
It was possibly the oddest proposal ever made, but she read it for what it was and let her gun arm waver for a breath-stealing moment. It was as well Peters seemed so deadly calm neither man moved an inch as he watched them with chilling indifference, since Tom was more interested in her response than their unwanted visitors.
‘Do you remember all those seaman’s knots Sam Barker has been teaching you to tie, Hal?’ Peters asked casually.
‘Of course I do. I’m not dexterous like Toby, but once I learn something I don’t forget it.’
‘Then tie one or two in these and make sure neither can get free. There’s a good chap.’
‘I can help,’ Josh said crossly, for being seven was clearly no excuse for missing out on anything interesting for the Trethayne clan.
‘You can keep your sister’s gun steady on the fat one, my friend,’ Peters said as if he didn’t think so either. ‘And I truly hope the sight of Josh Trethayne with a gun terrifies you as deeply as it does me, whoever you are,’ Peters said as he held his own aim rock steady and made sure neither man had any thoughts about seizing Hal and using him as a hostage against their own escape.
Luckily it seemed to do so and they kept still as statues. Tom and Polly were far too preoccupied with not looking at each other to be much use, although Tom always swore afterwards if he hadn’t had such an able pack of helpers he might have taken a much more active role in subduing the prisoners himself.
‘Deal with them, would you, Peters?’ he said absently as he took his eyes off Polly long enough to nod sagely at the others and let them leave without him.
‘Will they be all right?’ Polly asked as if she only had half her mind on the supposed business of the night as well.
‘I should imagine so. I know your pistol wasn’t loaded, even if Josh and that poor man he’s driving along like a cow to market have no idea,’ Tom replied.
‘What do you mean “ours”?’ she demanded in the semi-darkness from the single lantern the others had left them to light up a whole cavernous hallway and half an empty house.
‘I mean marry me, live with me, love me,’ Tom said a little desperately, for suddenly it didn’t seem quite so certain she would believe him after that ridiculous scene this morning when he made it very plain he wasn’t going to ask her to be anything in his life.
‘Why?’
‘Because I want you to?’
‘Not enough.’
‘Then do it because I think you the most extraordinary woman I ever met, because I can’t imagine how tedious my life would be without you and your brothers and your oddly assorted band of friends and because I love you more than I thought I had it in me to love anyone. Be everything to me that I always thought I couldn’t have, Paulina Trethayne. Please? Before I beg and embarrass us both.’
‘I can’t be meek and conventional and there’s no point trying to make me into a proper marchioness. I’m more suited to be your mistress, but I can’t do it. I can’t abandon my family.’
‘And if anything happened to me you would fight the devil himself back into hell to see that our whelps were safe. If I’m ever to have a wife and gamble on making children with her, she will just have to be you. I couldn’t dare the fates and risk making them with anyone else, Polly. No other woman on God’s earth has your courage and loyalty and that lioness’s heart of yours and at last I’ve had the good sense to realise I don’t want to live without you.’
So far they had faced each other like adversaries, but now he moved closer. She eyed him sceptically and he could sense her going through his list of reasons with a fine-toothed comb, but they had been enchanted on a more sensual level from the very first moment they set eyes on each other and he intended to take advantage of the fact right now.
‘And you’re sure you love me? It seems to have come upon you suddenly, considering you rejected me earlier today.’
‘It crept up on me inch by inch from the first day on, but having the sense to know it did ambush me tonight. Now I wonder it took me so long to realise why I felt as if I was living in the wrong skin, why I lay awake in the middle of a howling gale, in the barest and most draughty room I’ve slept in since I was eight years old, night after night and longed for you to be lying in that bed next to me, even if you were fast asleep. If you’ll promise to lie by my side for the rest of our lives, I’ll put up with living in this old wreck while it’s made fit for a marchioness to live in once again. If you tell me you can’t endure the idea, I don’t think I shall even be able to come back to Dayspring again, however, for I truly couldn’t endure it without you now, Polly. I can’t stand the thought of anything much about my life without you in it now I’ve come to see sense at last.’
‘Put like that, I almost believe you mean it,’ she allowed, and neither of them took much notice when the pallid light suddenly went out, as if the candle had been snuffed by some mischievous ghost.
‘Believe it, my darling Amazon,’ he whispered and the darkness seemed to unleash everything they felt together this morning and something more as well.
‘Convince me,’ she breathed as his eager hands reached for her and found no resistance at all, so he did so as thoroughly and emphatically as he could at such short notice.
* * *
Hours later Polly lay at